Shane Richmond is Head of Technology (Editorial) for Telegraph Media Group. He first joined the Telegraph in 1998 and has been Online News Editor and Communities Editor. He writes about all kinds of technology but especially Apple, iOS, ebooks and ereaders, and digital media.

The internet is vital to Britain, which is why we need better broadband

The internet makes up 7.2 per cent of Britain's GDP and, if it was an economic sector, it would be Britain's fifth largest, according to a report compiled by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for Google.

The biggest driver of growth, according to BCG, will be consumption. The report says that "modest increases in broadband adoption and in consumer acceptance of online shopping" could mean that the internet is responsible for 10 per cent of Britain's GDP by 2015.

If anything, the internet is a more important part of Britain's economy than these numbers suggest because GDP cannot capture things like efficiency savings from internet working or the size of the online advertising market.

In other words, the internet is vital to Britain. And yet, just 15 per cent of Britons have broadband speeds above 5 megabits per second, putting Britain 17th in a list of 23 OECD nations. Virgin may have announced plans for a 100Mbps broadband service but not everyone can access it. Virgin's fibre network has not yet reached me, for example, and I live in London.

The BCG report found that the areas that are getting the least out of the internet and therefore contributing the least to the internet economy are, not surprisingly, also the areas with slower broadband speeds and limited internet access.

The report shows strong links between good broadband access and internet-driven consumption. Given the importance of the internet to the economy it's surely vital that the Government does more to improve broadband access and get more Britons online.

Sadly, as I wrote back in July, the Government is only prepared to commit to target speeds of 2Mbps for all Britons by 2015. That isn't fast enough now; it will be meaningless in five years time. Furthermore, there are a quarter of Britons who are not online at all. A huge economic opportunity is being missed and the Government isn't doing enough about that.